Here, you are urged and encouraged to run your mouths about something important.

Thursday, September 23, 2010

BLACK PANTHER CASE BOMBSHELL - COATES TO TESTIFY

If you thought it was big news when former Justice Department Attorney J. Christian Adams resigned over the DOJ's handling of the New Black Panther Party case so he could testify in front of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, this story is likely to trump that one. Christopher Coates was Adams' boss before the latter resigned over what he indicated was potentially false testimony given by Assistant Attorney General of the Human Rights division inside the DOJ, Thomas E. Perez.

Now it is learned that Coates - a huge piece to this puzzle - will be defying the orders of his superiors not to testify in front of the Civil Rights Commission. Coates has made it known that he WILL honor the subpoena and testify on Friday, September 24th.

Ten months ago, Coates, the award-winning former chief of the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division, was subpoenaed by the Commission to testify about the case. He was subsequently instructed by DOJ officials to ignore the subpoena. Within the past hour, commissioners were informed that Chairman Gerald Reynolds had spoken with Coates and that the chairman would reconvene the Commission’s ongoing hearing on Friday at 9:30 a.m. to hear Coates’s testimony.

The Civil Rights Commission has sought to obtain Coates’ testimony on Justice’s dismissal of the New Black Panther Party voter intimidation case in Philadelphia. In a recent request to Justice, the Commission agreed to limit initial questioning of Coates to accusations made by former career lawyer J. Christian Adams about statements and other actions by Julie Fernandes, an Obama administration political appointee, if DOJ produced Coates.

The DOJ refused.

Back on June 30th, Adams granted an interview to Fox News Channel's Megyn Kelly. You can watch both parts of that interview HERE.

To get an idea of how potentially explosive Coates' testimony could be, check out this excerpt from that interview:

KELLY: And Chris Coates, his name is going to come up later. He was your boss?

ADAMS: That’s correct.

KELLY: And how many years had he been at DOJ?

ADAMS: He’s a voting rights giant. He’s been practicing voting rights law since 1976. He’s literally one of the greatest voting rights attorneys in the history of the country. And he was the, really the lead on this case.

If there is someone in the DOJ who should be getting a little nervous right now, it's Thomas Perez. If it can be proven that he lied under oath, this could be an extremely big scandal. Another interesting side story to all of this is that Perez is the lead attorney in the Federal suit against Sheriff Joe Arpaio.